


Playing Favorites

by olivemartini



Series: All The Lovely Ones Have Scars [8]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Insecure Tony, idk - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-13 17:06:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14116971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivemartini/pseuds/olivemartini
Summary: "All my are just here because they need to be."  Tony laughed, and Pepper couldn't help but start a tally of how many drinks he had today.  "Look at you and Happy.  Closest people I've got, and you're only here because I pay you."





	Playing Favorites

Part of her must have gotten used to operating under the assumption that she's Tony's favorite person, because now that she's watching Tony hang out with Rhodey 24/7, she's actually kind of jealous.

Not that it's a bad thing that he's here.  With Colonel Rhodes beside him, Tony is happier.  He drinks less and eats more and sometimes even falls asleep at a regular hour, and Pepper doesn't have to go out and pull Tony out from a bar once the whole week, because Rhodey always knows when to cut him off.  They're friends from back in their MIT days, apparently, and Rhodey seems to have no shortage of stories about young Tony, some of them funny, some of them worrisome.

"Pepper."  Tony is calling for her, and she knows that she shouldn't bother, because she has work to do and Tony was just stretched out across the couch with Rhodes, playing some video game that Pepper can't ever remember the name of.  She's fairly certain that Tony designed it because all the regular video games bored him.   "Pepper, Pep, love of my life, Pepper, my darling."

She sighed, and then shoved the folders away harder than she intended, scattering papers all over the floor.  It was a long walk from her office to the living room, and when she turned the corner, it really was just Tony so concentrated on the video game that he didn't want to get up.  "How can I help, Mr. Stark?"

The corner of his mouth twitched up in a smile.  She hadn't called him by his last name in ages, and was only doing so because they have company.

"Tell Rhodes that I'm perfectly capable of deciding how many drinks I can handle."  Tony didn't even look at her, just pressed a bunch of buttons to make the on-screen gun fire a bunch of bullets.  When there was a particular large burst of pixelated blood, Rhodey fist bumped the air.  "Tell him."

"That wasn't really the question."  Rhodey said, smiling.  He had an easy smile, and Pepper could see why Tony would have gravitated towards him in college.   He was the steady drum beat to all of Tony's chaos.  "The question was me wondering if you should take tonight to work on your actual job."

"He should."  Tony craned his head back to look at her, unknowingly brushing his head against her hand, and she threaded her fingers through his air without thinking about it.  They've become clingy people, her and Tony.  "But I suppose he can take one day off."

Tony grinned up at her, mouthing a thank you.  She was probably getting cookies for this one.  "See Rhodey?"  Pepper excuses herself, but not before she sees the wink that Tony sends her way.  "I told you it wouldn't be a problem."

 

 

 

It wasn't a problem, really, except for the fact that deadlines were fast approaching and the work kept piling up and the inbox on his email was so full that Pepper couldn't hope to get them all answered.  Pepper wished she could have told him to stay home, but Tony looks so happy whenever he's around Rhodey, and she couldn't quite bring herself to take any of that time away from him.  Sometimes, she argued with herself as she tried to make a dent in the heaping pile of work, there are more important things.

But those things were important, and she couldn't keep pushing them off forever, which is why it's so frustrating when Tony spends the next day after his night out with Rhodes locked away in his room, Jarvis telling them all of them that he was not going to come out for some time.

"How long do you think this is going to last?"

If Pepper wanted someone to commiserate with, she shouldn't have turned towards Rhodes, because he just shrugged and kept working on making them breakfast, which consisted of multiple pounds of greasy bacon.  Pepper had already decided she would stick to her coffee.  

"Could be an hour.  Could be a week."  He didn't seem bothered by it, but then again, he was not the one that would have to answer to Stane if the work was not turned in on time.  Pepper envied the people who could flit in and out of Tony's life, who knew him as a good time and never had to deal with the fall out.  "He gets like this sometimes."

Pepper grit her teeth instead of answering, tightening the grip on her pen.  She _knew_ that Tony got like this sometimes.  She knew a lot of things about Tony that she doubted the Colonel did, like how he had torn down all the pictures of his mother because he couldn't bear to look at them and hated the fact that he couldn't just build whatever he wanted and he only drank to shut up the voices screaming in his brain.  She knew Tony.  She didn't need some guy who only pops in once every two months to tell her what he's like.

 

 

 

Tony does come out, eventually, and then he drives down the office, saying that he would take care of Stane himself.

Pepper's relieved, because that means she doesn't have to make excuses as to why nothing from her was showing up in the company inbox, but Rhodey looks a little sad. Today was going to be his last day here, after all, and tomorrow he would have to fly back to the base with the promise of a bunch of new weapons for the army to play around with.

"It won't take long."  Tony promised, looking happier than Pepper had seen him.  He's always happiest right after he pulls himself out of his downward spirals.  "I'll be back in time for dinner."

The door slams closed, and that left the two of them alone again.  Even though Pepper had met him before and was well aware how much he meant to Tony, she still hadn't had a proper conversation with him, and now it looks like he's sizing her up, as if wondering why Tony would possibly keep her around.

"Tony told me that he doesn't like assistants."

Pepper wants to tell him that she isn't just an assistant, that she was more of a cross between an advisor and babysitter and family friend, and also the one that takes care of him when he's drunk or sad or hurting and doesn't know how to take care of himself, but there was no need to get into semantics.

"He also says he doesn't have any friends,"  She only says it because she knew it would bother him.  "He's a man of contradictions."

Rhodey laughs, then nods at her like they're in on this together.  "That he is."

 

 

Rhodey leaves.  Pepper doesn't watch the good bye, doesn't even leave her office, but she knows that the minute Tony watches that car disappear he's going to get angry, and sulky, and impossible to work with.

She's intending to bully him into working.  To just stand beside him and scream unit he signs the papers and looks at all the problems that he needs to fix.  But then she gets down to the workshop and sees him hunched over his desk, head resting on his arms and DUM-E whirring helplessly beside him and her resolve crumbles.

"Tony."  She doesn't want to startle him.  Sometimes, sounds are too much for him, so she slips her heels off and pads across the floor, easing herself up onto the desk where he would have no choice but to talk to her.  "He's going to come back."

"When his work sends him."  Tony's being unfair.  It's not like he calls him up every night to check on him.  Friendships are a two way street.  "All my friends are here because they need to be."  He laughs, and Pepper can't help but tally up the amount of drinks he's had today.  "Look at you and Happy.  Closest people I've got, and you're only here because I pay you."

They weren't.  Driving him around and forcing him to do work were their jobs, but they were here because they cared for him.  If Stark Industries collapsed and Tony's career went up in smoke, Pepper's pretty sure she would still find herself with him, trying t get him to leave his stupid workshop and do something useful.

"I'm your friend, Tony."  Sitting on the desk was one of those breaks in propriety that just keeps happening.  Pepper isn't sure why she's still trying to be professional.  Tony doesn't complain about it, just leans forward so his head was resting against her stomach.  "I care about you, you know that."

"Yeah?"

She's got one hand on the back of his head and the other on his shoulder, sort of just holding him there until he's ready to move again.  The press would have a field day with this.

"Yeah.  If I quit, I'd hang out with you all the time."  She could picture it, what they could be if they didn't have the ever present divide between boss and employee hanging over them.  If she could exist independently from him.  "Send you funny videos of cats."

He was a quiet for a long time, and then- "Don't quit, okay, Pepper?"

Sometimes she wants to, but not because she's tired of him.  Mostly because she cares too much, and it's exhausting, to care for someone who doesn't seem to want your love.  

"Okay, Tony."  She tilted her head back and made herself stare into the lights.  "I won't quit." 

**Author's Note:**

> come find me @olive.writes.fanfic on instagram


End file.
